Is it Better to Be a Contrarian or a Momentum Chaser?

"Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong." -- Oscar Wilde

I don't know if Wilde was successful as an investor -- or whether he was an investor at all, for that matter. But from my perspective, judging from the above quote, he certainly would have started with the right attitude.

Periodically, theories catch the imagination of the investing crowd about how the world works. At first, they...